Vesti la Giubba on 57th Street, Jonas Kaufmann Returns With the Berlin Philharmonic
Carnegie Hall opened its season with a tenor who had not sung with an orchestra in New York in eight years
When the tenor Jonas Kaufmann walked onto the Carnegie Hall stage on Thursday night, he was returning to New York with an orchestra behind him for the first time in eight years. The occasion was the hall's Opening Night Gala, headlined by the Berlin Philharmonic under Kirill Petrenko.
TicketNews listed the gala for Thursday, October 8, at 7 p.m. in Isaac Stern Auditorium. OperaWire reviewed it, and the concert ran about 75 minutes.
An Italian Program
The evening was given over to Italian music. Petrenko opened with the overture to La Forza del Destino. Kaufmann then sang four arias, and the orchestra played two Respighi classics, Fountains of Rome in the middle and Pines of Rome at the close.
According to OperaWire's David Salazar, Kaufmann opened with the prologue from Pagliacci, a piece written for baritone. He followed it with "Vesti la giubba," which Salazar called perhaps the tenor's most polished moment of the night. Next came Federico's lament from L'Arlesiana, which Kaufmann began in hushed pianissimo singing and built from there. He closed with the short "Amor ti vieta" from Fedora, sung with a fluid and elegant legato line.
The review was not all praise. Salazar noted raspiness in the tenor's voice, lower notes that lacked pristine resonance, and an interpolated high B that was cut short while Kaufmann appeared to struggle with phlegm. The audience still gave him his biggest applause of the night after the Arlesiana aria. "Kaufmann's appearance felt brief but effective," Salazar wrote.
A Long Time Away
The return carries some history. OperaWire says Kaufmann last sang in New York at the Park Avenue Armory in 2023. His most recent Carnegie Hall appearance was a lieder recital in 2021. He last performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 2018, and the review says he has been vocal about having no interest in going back to the Met.
That makes this concert, in the review's words, the first time in eight years he has performed in New York with an orchestra of any kind. The review adds that Kaufmann sang Pagliacci's prologue in a Vienna production in 2025, which led to speculation about a move to baritone roles. He put that to rest on social media.
The Orchestra Stays
The Berliners are not done at Carnegie. The hall's own listing has Petrenko leading them on Saturday, October 10, at 8 p.m. in Elgar's Enigma Variations and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4, with another concert on Sunday afternoon at 2. At the gala, by Salazar's account, the strings were at their finest in the Pagliacci intermezzo, playing he called lush, and Pines of Rome brought the night together, with Petrenko turning again and again toward the brass players placed in the balcony. After the Respighi the orchestra played an encore, the Folk Festival from Shostakovich's Op. 97a suite.
It is a big autumn for orchestral nights in New York. On September 30 Dudamel opened the Philharmonic's season with a gala at Lincoln Center, and Steve Reich, who turned 90 on October 3, has his Music for 18 Musicians staged at the Armory next week.
For Kaufmann, the night was brief but not minor. He sang four arias to a hall that had waited a long time to hear him with an orchestra. The Berlin Philharmonic plays Carnegie again tonight and tomorrow afternoon.
